Fortunate Son

“I’m pregnant,” she said in a controlled voice. “I told the doctor that I’d only had unprotected sex a day after my period, and he said that sometimes healthy sperm lives on for a week or more waiting for ovulation.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” he asked, biding for time.

“I called Drew. I asked him what I should do.”

“What did he say?”

“He said to come out to Connecticut, that we could get married and he’d raise the baby as his.” She wailed then, crying so loudly that Eric had to hold the phone away from his ear.

It was nine months from Eric’s sixteenth birthday. He would graduate from high school before then. And he would soon be a father. The graduation, his child’s birth — he imagined both of these scenes in the hollow skull of his drawing.

“Eric?”

“Will your baby need you to love its father?” he asked.

“What?”

“A baby needs love, right?” Eric said. “He needs his 1 3 6

F o r t u n a t e S o n

mother to love him and his father, and he needs his mother and father to love each other.”

“I’ll die if you leave me, Eric.”

“Then why did you call Drew?”

“I’m scared,” she said. “I’m scared and that’s something you don’t understand. I can’t explain it to you because you’re never afraid. Drew understands because he always is.”

Eric realized that the emotion he felt the most often with Christie was shame. He was ashamed because she was like a used textbook for him, something to learn from but not to keep. She studied him so closely that she saw things in him that he never considered. And she shared her knowledge without holding back. She was selfless and transparent, almost invisible to him.

Like air, he thought.

“What are you afraid of ?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she moaned. “Having a baby with no money and no husband. Loving Drew and needing you so deep inside. Do you want me to give the baby up?”

“For adoption?”

“Abortion.”

Eric remembered what Branwyn had said about Elton, Tommy’s father: Elton had the choice to be with me or not and Tommy didn’t. I couldn’t ask Tommy if he minded if I didn’t have him and if he didn’t have a life to live. No sunshine or sandy beaches.

Tommy didn’t even know what a sandy beach was.

“No,” Eric said. “You shouldn’t do that. I mean, the baby needs a life, and Drew wants to love both you and the baby.”

“What about you?” Christie asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I want to have this baby with you,” she said.

“Then we’ll have our baby and raise him to be a man.”

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Wa l t e r M o s l e y

“Or a woman,” Christie added. Her voice was now bright and filled with hope.

Eric wondered what Drew would think when he realized that he was the backup just in case Eric said no.

“Go to sleep, Christie,” Eric said. “I’ll come over in the morning.”

“When?”

“At nine.”

“What about school?”

“I’ll skip it for one day. We can go to the doctor together.

And talk about having our baby.”

“I love you,” she said.

“And I love both of you.”

B y that t i m e Minas Nolan was leaving for work at ten to seven every morning. He rarely made it home before eleven.

He was sleeping four hours a night and did not take vacations or even weekends off. The only time that he and Eric saw each other was between six and ten to seven, when they’d have breakfast together and share the New York Times. It was a day-old paper, but they didn’t mind. Reading together was their ritual; the news had little to do with it.